WhatsApp launches video calling in India

WhatsApp on Tuesday launched the video calling feature for its Indian users. The feature was already available for beta users since early October. Company’s co-founder Jan Koum told Reuters that video calls will be rolled out to 180 countries within hours after the feature is introduced in India.

WhatsApp India’s business head Neeraj Arora announced that the chat app has now more than 160 million monthly active users making India the largest market for WhatsApp. “India is the biggest country we have- more users than any other country in the world,” Arora told Economic Times. “Video calling is a big step forward. It is in line with our mission- we want to make sure we give every possible way for people to stay in touch with their families and friends. Video calling is the most immersive and something that makes you feel really close to somebody else.”

WhatsApp has not added any separate button for the video calling. The user is given two options when pressing the call button in the app: voice and video calls. While the voice calling is known to all, the video calling enables the users to view the video of the person he or she has called via chat app. The option to change from front camera to rear camera is also available. User can even mute the call and will also be notified in case they have a missed call.

The call log will now show all the call details including the video calls with a small video icon appearing on the side of the contacts video called.

Explaining how the WhatsApp video call will work on poor internet connections, Arora said that the company has built the feature just like its voice calls.”How we have built this product is just like voice calls, which is if you have a great network condition- a WiFi or 4G- it will be HD quality, and you start moving to conditions which are not that great, it will be slightly low resolution, we hope it will still work but the quality will go up and down a little depending upon the quality of the network.”